Numerous instant messaging services are currently available, such as AIM and ICQ from America Online, Yahoo Messenger from Yahoo, and MSN from Microsoft. Each of these Instant Messaging services provide a community of users with the ability to send and receive instant messages to one another. Using these instant messaging services on mobile devices has been problematic. One solution is to provide a separate instant messaging application for each of the services on the mobile device. This is problematic, however, because mobile devices typically have limited fixed memory resources, and having four separate instant messaging applications drains a great deal of the available device memory. Another solution has been to provide a single, generic application and single user interface that connects to the various Instant Messaging services through a separate gateway for each service. This solution is also problematic, however, because it sacrifices the full range of functionality and unique interface attributes for any of the particular instant messaging services.
Instant messaging services exchange messages and state information (also referred to as presence information) between users logged into the instant messaging community. Each user typically receives state information from only a subset of users that they are interested in communicating with. In ICQ, for example, the presence information of a select group of other ICQ clients is typically maintained in a “buddy list,” so that when the user of an ICQ client consults the list, the user knows if any of the corresponding users in the “buddy list” are available for instant messaging, or if they are not. Presence information in ICQ is defined using states such as connected, chatty, away, extended away, occupied, do not disturb, invisible, and offline. The other exemplary instant messaging applications mentioned above use different terms to describe the buddy list and presence states, and may also provide a different set of functions and distant user interface attributes.